Nela had shut herself into her baskets to be alone; we will follow her, however, and look in upon her thoughts. But first we must give a little more of her history.

Having entirely lacked all instruction in her infancy, having equally lacked all those soft endearments, which unfailingly open the mind to recognize certain truths, Marianela's powerful imagination had conceived a strange set of ideas, a wild and fanciful theogony, and a highly whimsical scheme of cause and effect. Teodoro Golfin's comparison of Nela's mind with the early stage of a primitive race was a particularly happy one. In her, as in them, the fascination of the marvellous was the predominant sense; she believed in supernatural agencies, apart from the one and supreme God, and saw in all natural objects an abstract personality, by no means cut off from all communication with men. In spite of all this, however, Nela had some knowledge of the Gospel. It had never been taught her, to be sure, but she had heard such things talked of. She saw that people went to a function they called the Mass, and she understood the idea of a sublime sacrifice; but beyond this her notions could not go. The contagion of a common feeling had accustomed her mind to reverence the image of the Crucified God; she knew it should be kissed, and she even could repeat some prayers that she had learnt mechanically; she knew whatever she wanted she could ask of God—but this was all. The absolute neglect in which her whole nature had been left until the time of her acquaintance with Pablo PenÁguilas was the cause of this confusion, and her friendship with this strange being, who, shut up in darkness, nevertheless with his mind's eye boldly investigated all the problems of life, had come to her too late. Nela's system of philosophy, of her own fabrication, had already petrified—a strange compound of paganism and sentimentality. At the same time it must be said that Marianela, though her spirit ranged so far outside the common atmosphere, was well endowed with good sense, and could form a sound judgment on the things of daily life, as has been seen in the advice she gave to Celipin. This, no doubt, was due to the native soundness of her mind.

The strongest instinct of her nature was her love, nay her secret passion, for physical beauty wherever she saw it. Nothing could be more natural than this impulse in a human soul growing up in total solitude, so far as society and teaching were concerned, and in constant intercourse, in close intimacy we may say, with Nature and all its sublime or gracious beauty—light, color, eloquent inarticulate voices, and infinite variety of form. And Marianela's admiration had assumed the guise of worship; in obedience to a law, which also governs the primitive race, she had personified all the beauty she saw around her and worshipped it in a single incarnation, ideal but human. This divinity of her imagination she called the Virgin Mary, a conception she had derived from the domain of religious thought, of which she knew so little. And the Virgin Mary would not have become her cherished ideal, if she had not joined to her moral perfections all the physical gifts of beauty and grace; if her aspect had not been noble and attractive, at once human and divine; if it had not seemed to Nela the epitome in which were concentrated all the glory of light, the sober peace of darkness, the music of running waters, the grace and sweetness of flowers, the freshness of the dew, the low complaining of the wind, the spotless purity of the mountain snow, the loving glances of the stars, and the solemn majesty of the clouds, as they ride across the vault of heaven.

The person of God himself she conceived of as terrible and austere, inspiring respect rather than love. All that was gracious was bestowed by the Virgin, and she was the giver of all that human creatures could ask for. God frowned, while She smiled; God chastised, but She forgave; this last notion was by no means a strange one. It is accepted with almost absolute faith among the laboring classes of the rural parts of Spain. Nor is it at all uncommon, when we find a strong imagination joined to extreme ignorance, to meet with the fusion which existed in Nela's mind of all the beauties of Nature with the beautiful personification which combines all the Æsthetic charms of the Christian ideal. If the darkness in which Nela dwelt had only been more complete, if she had but been rather more destitute of religious notions, she would have been an utter pagan and have worshipped the moon, the woods, the rivers, fire and the sun. This was Nela as her life in Socartes had made her, and such she remained till she was fifteen. After that, her comradeship with Pablo and her frequent talk with the lad, whose ideas were so broad and so sound, had somewhat modified her tone of thought. But she still allowed supreme sovereignty to physical beauty; she still superstitiously adored the Virgin as the embodiment of all the loveliness of Nature, and, in a way, of all moral law; crowning her system with the most extraordinary ideas as to death and the life to come.

Curling herself up in her basket, Marianela's reflections took this form:

"Holy Mother of God! Why—why did you not make me beautiful? Why did you not look down on me as soon as I was born? For the more I look at myself, the uglier I seem to grow. Oh! why am I in this world at all? Of what good can I be? Who can care for me? One single soul, Lady Mother, only one, and he only because he cannot see me. What is to become of me when he sees me and casts me off? for it is impossible that he should ever love me when he sees my miserable little body, my freckled face, my ugly mouth, my sharp nose, my dirty brown skin—all my hideous little self—of no good to any one but to kick perhaps. What is that? Only Nela—nothing at all. She is of no use to any one but the blind boy. If his eyes are opened, if he turns and looks at me, I shall drop down dead.

"He is the only being to whom 'Nela' is anything more important than the cats and the birds. He loves me. Loves me as lovers love their sweet-hearts, as God intends human beings to love each other.—Oh Lady Mother! now that you are going to work a miracle and let him see, make me beautiful or strike me dead, for I shall not be wanted any more in this world. I am good for nothing and ever shall be, excepting to one person. Am I sorry then that he should be able to see?—No, no, not that, no. I want him to see; I would give my own eyes for him to see with his; I would give my life. I hope Don Teodoro can work the miracle as they say. Blessings on all wise men! What I do not want is that my master should ever see me. Before I will let him see me, oh Mother! I will bury myself alive, I will throw myself into the river.—Yes, the earth shall cover my ugliness. I ought never to have been born."

She writhed in her narrow basket, and then she went on:

"All my heart and thought are for him. That poor, blind man, who has taken it into his head to be fond of me—he is the first being in the world to me next to the Virgin Mary. Oh! If only I were tall and handsome; if I had the figure, and the face, and the color—above all, the color—of other girls! If I could only make a lady of myself and dress myself up.—And then my greatest joy would be to think that his eyes liked to look at me. If I were like other girls, even like Mariuca—how soon I would find a way of getting taught and being made a lady of. Oh Mother Mary, Queen of the world! The only creature that loves me, I am going to lose: he will leave me. Why did you ever let him love me, and let me love him? It ought not—never—to have been."

The tears poured down her cheeks; she folded her arms and turned over, and even when half asleep she still was speaking to herself:

"Oh, how much I love you, child of my soul! Love me too, love me very much. It is Nela who is no good to any one.—Love me very much. Let me give you a kiss—here on your head.—But do not open your eyes, do not look at me. Shut them—so."